The Middle of the Road
by Rustam
Summary: In a series of flashbacks, the immortal Morrigan reflects on the life she's led and the circumstances that have led her to the modern world.
1. Chapter 1

The highway connecting the city of Nantes to the city of Brest, describing a north-south axis on France's western coast as it looks out onto the Bay of Biscay, passes numerous landmarks to French history, the most prominent of course being La Rochelle, the ancient citadel where the Huguenots defended their faith for the last time against the onslaught of Cardinal Richelieu and Catholic monarchy. It really was nothing personal. Richelieu would later ally himself with the Protestant princes of Germany against the Habsburg Empire, after all. The Protestants simply believed that because they had a different religion, that they were above being ruled by the King of France, a belief that Richelieu felt was much mistaken. They were simply disguising their rebellious tendencies under a pastor's frock, an attitude Richelieu believed that had the Protestants even an ounce of intellectual rigor, ethics, or even Gallic good taste, they would have realized was wholly cynical and blatantly disingenuous. This and many other battles had been fought upon this coastline, the ruins for some of which still remain, silent testimony to France's many upheavals in the course of its violent, if typically European, history. 

She who called herself Morrigan Aensland could smell, she believed, the souls of the long-dead upon the breeze, the window of her rented Renault rolled down to let in the night air, her arm slung over the edge of the driver's side door while she steered one-handed. The bright lights of her dashboard provided a colorful contrast to the darkness outside, broken only by the regular flash of a distant lighthouse, lost and muffled in mist. The moon had set, and the sun was due to rise soon. In the meantime, she recreated in her mind the fleeting images that whipped past her senses like the painted lines of the pavement beneath her wheels. Armies had encamped here, marching to and fro. Ships had ventured up and down this coast since history began. The memory of each one was marred by death, the often violent, senseless death that in the past was always close at hand. A musical group called "Autour de Lucie" played softly on the radio, the volume turned down low, an oddly incongruous soundtrack to her mood, feeling the vast gulf of history washing against her just as the breakers washed against the shore below the cliff across which the highway ribboned in gently unfolding arcs. It was a history, however, that was highly impersonal. A thing she approached calmly and appraisingly, as she had approached her clients that evening at the small restaurant at the outskirts of Nantes.

"The salvation of souls," she had said, her voice as clipped and professional as the business suit she wore and the bun atop her head, "will, in the new century, be the property of those with the greatest access." Her presentation was met by the skeptical gaze of her latest prospective customers, the archbishop of Chambery and the various prelates of his staff. She had, of course, the advantage that, to a man, despite the vows of chastity endemic to their faith, they found their gazes drifting to the curve of her neck, the swell of her chest, her arresting cerulean eyes... To each, she rejoined with a cursory, if sympathetic glance, having the good grace not to obviously exploit their only too-human weakness. In such a way she could usually earn their gratitude, as well as their admiration. "Imagine the millions of people, a number that grows larger every moment, as more and more sign up for internet access." Her hands had clasped together as she leaned forward, recrossing her legs; from his vantage point, a lucky _abbe_ had the chance to briefly glimpse a hose-clad thigh. "Let's face it," she'd said, waving a hand. "Couch potatoes. All of them. And why?" Her head tilted, eyes searching the faces before her, who remained happily mute. "Lack of motivation. Or rather, lack of inspiration." A smile. "None feel that passion for Our Lord and Savior that is the guiding light of your lives, and the faithful of your congregation. They simply haven't been exposed to it. So how does one get them exposed? In days gone by, this job was done by missionaries." She'd shrugged her shoulders. "I had some contract work last week for a Mormon pastor, in the USA? His nose," she went on, holding a fist over her face, "was a great big plum, broken from so many doors slamming against it." Scattered laughter. How enchanting they found her. "No, gentlemen, your eminence. The new missionaries will be online. Coding web-based content to dazzle the souls crying out for guidance. Content produced with love, with a light shining in the heart of their programmers, inspired by the Holy Spirit." Another dazzling smile as she pulled off her glasses, handing out prospecti to each curate seated at her table. "I have here some demographics from other diocese in the United States and England, charting the success of the websites we designed with their needs firmly in mind." The archbishop's eyebrows had raised sharply, flipping through the pages. Morrigan knew, at that moment, that it was all over. Some professional aspect of her character, however, couldn't resist driving it home. "Considering that these are primarily Protestant countries, I think the success rate speaks for itself." The archbishop nearly jumped out of his chair when Morrigan impulsively leaned over, placing a delicate, long-fingered hand upon his wrist. "Imagine the great things you could accomplish in France, your Eminence," she'd said, staring into his eyes. "Your people, these good French men and women, want to be good Catholics. They've simply forgotten how. You need to get to them where they live, hidden in their dark rooms, treading water in the sea of information. You need to be their lighthouse."

The speech was spontaneous, as they all are. If the clients believed her presentation was rehearsed and forced, she wouldn't be nearly so effective. Bit by bit she won them to her side; and with each conquest, she came that much closer to consolidation. All of the world's religions, slowly but surely allowing their technological needs to be handled by a single source, surreptitiously gathering their own power to itself, slowly but surely influencing their policy and even their doctrine. It was a slow, subtle means of conquest. People like Morrigan plan for the long-term.

As she drives past one such lighthouse, a real one as opposed to a metaphor, seeing the vast cones of light spill into nothingness beyond the rocks of their lonely promontories, she wonders if perhaps some psychic emanation of this evening's ride had made a ripple in her mind, causing her to think of such imagery. This and other leaps of logic occurred to her as she drove, her mind occupying itself as the hours unwound like the ribbon of highway in front of her, as featureless and indistinct as the rest of the countryside save for the white stripe in the center of the road she followed.

As the car climbed a hill, the road moving inland as the cliffs smoothed out into a rolling series of plateaux, without thinking she let her heel-clad foot ease off the accelerator, the car slowing. She turned the wheel, letting the car roll onto the shoulder, before putting the Renault in park and setting the brake. For a moment she sat there, staring through the windshield, her hands in her lap, before opening the door; the interior beeped as she slipped out of her heels, tossing them back in the car before shutting the door. Crossing to the seaward side of the road, toes slithering through the moist grass, she made her way down the hillside toward the shore, pondering that usually one finds the scenery familiar before one remembers where one has seen it. In this case, the two events happened simultaneously.  
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Once upon a time, in the Year of Our Lord 1801, on the western coast of France overlooking the Bay of Biscay, was the seaside town of Beauvines, neither large nor small, lovely nor ugly. It was all the town the inhabitants' needed. Even as they complained about the weather, the price of grain, the politics of far-off Paris, or the sheer lack of excitement in their part of the country, they never once had cause to complain of the town itself. The town proper climbed the gently sloping hill to the plains beyond, where farmers grew the wheat, barley and other grains they would sell in the markets of Brest; or, one could also say it descended to the docks, home of the various fishing boats that plied their trade in the coastal waters. It was all in where one was standing.

The town had a small church, presided over by a modest town priest who grew petunias (he tried his best, anyway) in the accompanying small garden. The town had a town hall, presided over by the mayor, a plump middle-aged man who had sworn undying allegiance to His Most Catholic Majesty King Louis XVI of France upon taking office. Of course when officials of the Directory had visited the town for a tax assessment, he'd then sworn undying loyalty to the Republic. Most of his citizenry were inclined to believe that such quick thinking had saved Beauvines from much trouble, and were quite satisfied with his job performance. In fact, ever since the Directory had been dissolved by the Consulate, the mayor had been anxiously awaiting a visit from representatives to whom he could swear undying loyalty yet again. Just to get everything on record, of course. No one ever questioned his loyalty. It was solid and dependable to anyone who cared enough to ask for it. His steady and able leadership had ensured that no one ever took an interest in Beauvines. "With any luck," the mayor had told his anxious people whenever disturbing news reached them from the rest of the country during the Revolution, "history will pass our little town by. After all, what would anyone want with a little village like Beauvines?" Such humble sentiments, rather than met with outraged civic pride, were received with due appreciation for their practicality.

The town had a blacksmithy, a post office, a tannery, a few shops, a few taverns, an inn (run by the aforesaid mayor, his generous wife, and five fair daughters, to whom he was utterly devoted, and just as utterly devoted to finding husbands for them to get them out of the house), a small school for children of the local gentry and the bourgeois, an apothecary, a tailor's, a lampwright's, a confectioner's, and a shipwright's shop, and a modestly numerous number of houses, along with other amenities of a picturesque but otherwise unremarkable and really quite boring French coastal town.

The town of Beauvines had one distinct advantage, however: it had a music teacher. Of piano and violin, specifically, charging modestly for her lessons and even less to those who wished their children to have knowledge of music but had little money to pay for it. A comparatively recent arrival, she'd moved into the small cottage formerly occupied by one M. de Coursin, who'd built the cozy little house with his own money. He had styled himself a writer searching for the peace and quiet to write his great works of literature, but had left for Paris to join the Army and seek adventure after two weeks of sitting at his desk and staring out the window. As luck would have it, he found a buyer in the sudden arrival by midnight carriage of one Madameoiselle Marguerite Morgaine d'Ains-la-terre, as she'd styled herself, appearing in the inn one evening in the autumn of 1798, soaked to the skin in a black cloak, her only baggage a valise containing a few expensive dresses, a purse sizable enough to purchase the cottage and surrounding land, and a genuine Stradivarius violin. Rumors, largely groundless, had appeared shortly after the madameoiselle's arrival: she was the mistress of a Director, who had been deposed by the Consulate and eliminated. She was an aristocrat, perhaps even a member of royalty such as the Duchess of Angouleme herself, the only surviving daughter of Marie-Antoinette, who simply wanted to live anonymously, away from painful memories of friends and family claimed by Mme. La Guillotine. She was a famous actress, dancer, or courtesan, retiring on the vast wealth she'd earned on the merits of her beauty. Some said she herself was an agent of the Consulate, reporting on subversive activity in the town's Department.

It is only human nature, in fact, that rumors would grow to surround the lovely madameoiselle, for she was a rare creature indeed. Citizens of the town would engage her in conversation, finding themselves enraptured by her long blond curls, her sapphire blue eyes, fair skin, and the gentle harmonies of her mellifluous voice, and find themselves unable to bring themselves to confront her about her origins, so charming was her speech, pleasant her company, affable her manner, and of course, stunning her beauty. In fact, ultimately it was she herself who occasionally gave details of her past. "Of late I had led a somewhat rootless existence, traveling in the South and East," she once said, her eyes growing distant for a moment, before returning to animation. "Here in Beauvines I wish to put down roots and end my wanderings, now that peace has returned." From this, the town gossips deduced that she'd had some connection with the Army, perhaps as an intrepid nurse, or, as the more cynical would claim with raised eyebrows, a 'lady of the garrison'.

"You're both wrong," said the more thoughtful. "Consider her knowledge of music! Quite obviously she was a performer, entertaining our troops in the salons of commandeered houses, cheering their melancholy and providing them a tender glimpse of the comforts of home. Hers is a beauty untouched by baseness."

It was understood by the townspeople that the Madameoiselle d'Ains-la-terre had a certain amount of wealth, but was obliged to find a steady source of income so that she might live in comfort. Discreet inquiries among the townspeople had yielded profitable results: soon a trickle of the sons and daughters of the town's gentry were her first students in the arts of music. The enthusiasm of the children impressed their peers, and their elders, and soon that trickle was a steady stream, which was about all the town could produce. As time went on, she became an organic part of the town of Beauvines, a fixture of its rhythms and cadences, as a precious objet d'art is the centerpiece of a museum exhibit, or a magnificent jewel is the showpiece, if not the center, of a crown. Far from being jealous, the ladies of the town were charmed by her respectful mien, ladylike ways, impeccable character and virtue, and eagerness to participate in their activities, as well as the admiration of their children. The gentlemen doffed their hats and sighed to themselves at her beauty, but found themselves completely at ease in her conversation. The mayor's famous five daughters adored her, and sought her advice, and soon His Honor found himself indebted to the madameoiselle for not only playing matchmaker for two of his daughters to their young beaux, but arranging favorable terms for their dowries. "Truly an angel," the town priest was heard to say on occasion, for the madameoiselle dutifully attended every Mass, and by her piety encouraged others to follow her example. Her very presence seemed to bring light to everything in her vicinity; even his petunias had started growing.

In fact it was as if, in subtle ways, the entire character of the town had changed, for the better. No longer did they feel like a lonely windswept hamlet between a vast ocean on one side and a dangerous continent full of war and terror on the other, but more like a cozy, content little corner of the world. Farmers started losing less of their livestock to predators and theft. No longer did the occasional fishing boat never come home. Bandits and robbers, so dangerous even in the enlightened era of the Republic, began to inexplicably steer clear of Beauvines and its environs. One night the daughter of a farmer had reported being accosted by a dirty, unkempt drifter dressed in rags, but that before anything dire could happen, the man turned bone-white, as if he'd seen a ghost, and ran off into the darkness screaming at the top of his lungs. A similar situation had occurred a month later when a detachment of soldiers had swaggered into Beauvines, bivouacked just outside town and demanded food, drink, provisions and various seedy entertainments. The town had done the best it could to provide whatever it was able, within reason - the townspeople's daughters had been instructed to lock themselves in their bedrooms for their own safety. However, that very evening, for no apparent reason, the soldiers were seen to wake abruptly in the middle of the night, pack their gear, and take off at a rapid pace to the North. No one could find an explanation for this behavior, but then again, its very desirability made questioning their good fortune seem like looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. The local boys claimed it was because the troop had caught wind of their plan to teach the soldiers a lesson in manners, and the sissified Paris pansies had no wish to match fists with the sons of the hearty West.

In any event, Beauvines had become a marvelous place to live. A town with music, and poetry, and literature, and a love of living, where there was always something to do. Lovers met, and discovered passions they'd never known they had hid within them. Orators harangued the crowds at town hall meetings about nothing in particular, national politics and the like, but did it so well that crowds erupted in applause, cries of approval, and copious vivats. The faithful wept at Mass out of love for the Lord. Local festivals such as the harvest were enjoyed more intensely than ever before, townspeople of all ages dancing around the towering bonfires, feeling closer to their fellows than ever before, never imagining that a fire could be so bright, or they could be so happy. Never was the sea or sky so blue, the grass so green, the sun so warm and friendly.

It was such a day in high summer when Madameoiselle Marguerite had no students that morning. She'd resolved instead to venture the short walk into town to visit the grocer's, that she might pick up supplies for her recently neglected larder; as of late, she and the other townspeople had spent evenings on the beach, roasting pigs upon spits over the sand and under the stars while the children splashed and cavorted in the water well into the night. The walk was pleasant, the cricket's chip measuring the pace of her easy-going stroll, smiles and nods to townspeople she knew - and she knew everyone - freely given as her journey progressed. There was of course no charge for her victuals - the son of the grocer was rapidly approaching the status of virtuoso upon his harpsichord, a feat that brought in customers to the store simply to listen to the music, as the boy constantly practiced. Like all the children of the town, he lived to impress his lovely music teacher, and like all the boys he was shyly in love with her, his heart turning to warm porridge when she touched his cheek or mussed his hair with maternal affection.

Emerging from the grocer's to the light of day, carrying a burlap sack full of oranges, flour, and cheese, she was immediately set upon by Marcel d'Andreas, the 20-year-old son of the town banker, who, pretending to be just passing by, tipped his tricornered hat to her with a bow. "Ah, ah, m-madameoiselle," he stammered, cheeks flushed crimson. "How pleasant to encounter you, ah, in such, such pleasant circumstances." There was an audible gulp.

The poor boy, Marguerite thought to herself, hefting the bag with two arms and favoring Marcel with a dazzling smile. "Hello, Marcel," she said, even a little charmed by his hapless demeanor.

At the sight of her smile, his eyes widened, mouth opening and closing and making funny shapes for just a moment, before he quickly remembered his manners. "Please, please, I insist, you must let me carry your parcel," he informed her. "I wuh, would not dream of a fine lady such as yourself forced to, um, carry this, uh, parcel the whole way back to your home. Your house. Home."

Marguerite's smile grew wider, and quite agreeably handed him her sack. "Why thank you Marcel, that's very gallant," she told him, inclining her head graciously. "In fact you favor me doubly, both by relieving me of this burden, and by exchanging it with the pleasantness of gentle company. How can I repay such kindness?" Quite casually, her arm linked with his, her hands clasping as she fell into step with Marcel, gently nudging him forward, as at this point he had something of a breakdown of motor skills.

"Y, yuh," he tried, before clearing his throat to try again. "You h-have done so... I mean, repaid me even more doubly... that is..." Marguerite noticed him steal a glance backwards, to the awestruck gazes of his friends nearby, who were pretending not to notice. Perhaps buoyed by the thought of their newfound respect, he turned back. "Your smile would be payment enough, madameoiselle, ah, if such were necessary. For it is my dearest pleasure." There's another audible gulp; perhaps giving him enough time in his own mind to formulate a quick prayer to God Himself for favoring him this day.

Master Marcel, Marguerite knew, was in fact the only son of his father, Alain d'Andreas. Quite the contrary to the myth of the greedy, grasping banker, the elder d'Andreas had the firmly rooted, absolute conviction of the necessity of his town's survival, for which he would do absolutely anything in his power to accomplish. You could see it in his eyes. He had a passion for his home, and had made it his life's mission to preserve it. He was unafraid of making hard decisions, such as foreclosing on a farm or upon the unpaid debts of one of the town's citizens, but only as an absolute last resort. First and foremost in his mind were thoughts of ways to assist those in need, particularly in ways to help them help themselves. He laughed in the face of pressure from bank managers in Brest or Paris, because his way worked, and it was profitable. The town, particularly now, was thriving. Marguerite could see some of that fire in the eyes of his son, Marcel, even if he was still young and it was mostly misdirected. She even found it attractive. And after all, the boy was very handsome. Marguerite even found herself contemplating thoughts of romance, an idea which had seemed alien to her for a long, long time. A fling wouldn't hurt by any means, provided it was discreet, but of course that's as far as it could go. It is rather ironic, Marguerite had often thought to herself, how being immortal means you have no future.

However, that didn't mean she was going to make it easy. He was going to have to work for it. "Madameoiselle d'Ains-la-terre," he said at one point in their walk, after a brief period of small talk, and it was clear that this was preamble to some solemn pronouncement, compliment, or request. A point for courage, Marguerite thought to herself. "There is going to be a party at the town hall," he managed to continue without stammering, "in honor of the engagement of the mayor's daughter. As maid of honor, of course you are obliged to attend, but I was wondering if perhaps you had found yourself, ah, an escort." The remaining words had tumbled out in a flood, Marcel's face returning to a decidedly more reddish hue.

Marguerite could only smile, turning to fix her gaze upon the boy, his eyes downcast as if making sure of where he put his feet. "As chance would have it, Marcel, I haven't," she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "I've been so busy with my students as of late, I have been unable to entertain offers." Come on, she thought to herself. I know you have it in you. Stout heart, lad.

"Then," Marcel replied, raising his eyebrows and blinking as if trying to convince her of a casual manner he didn't have, "p-perhaps you would do me the honor of, of allowing me the honor... that is, of being your escort at this occasion. I assure you, my intentions are impeccable."

"Why Marcel," said Marguerite, as if the thought had never occurred to her. "That would save me no end of trouble and perhaps even the embarrassment of attending alone. I gratefully accept, sir, and the honor is mine." Please don't faint, she thought to herself. I'm not carrying you home.

To his credit Marcel stayed upright, but only just; as soon as the fact that his suit had been accepted his face grew into an uncontrollable smile, which oddly warmed Marguerite's heart. "I shan't trouble you further, sir," she said, unclasping his arm and hefting her sack, giving him a curtsy and a grin as they reached the outskirts of Beauvines. "We've almost returned to my cottage, and I would scarcely wish to violate the propriety of a gentleman such as yourself by suggesting he enter the house of an unmarried lady. Particularly since we shall be seeing each other at a social occasion."

Marcel bowed, doffing his hat. "Of course, madameoiselle," he said, before straightening, smile still on his face. "And I thank you for allowing me the pleasure of your company, both this day and in the future. Until then, farewell."

Marguerite smiled, giving a little wave. "Goodbye, Marcel," she told him, and watched him stroll away, his feet nearly an inch off the ground, at least in a figurative sense. She took a little breath and turned, walking back to the house, looking up at the sky in the gentle summer sunlight, taking a deep breath of the air, smelling the perfume of nature. The day was beautiful. She felt beautiful. She felt that at last she'd found somewhere she could belong, where she could feel safe, where people wouldn't be afraid of her. At least for a time. Not forever. But a little while isn't too much to ask, is it?

As she approached her cottage through the surrounding copses of trees, she immediately sensed something was wrong. There was a sudden stillness surrounding it, and as the front side came into view, the forms of two mounted horsemen standing guard became immediately apparent. These were not ordinary horsemen either, rather, the horses, one white, one black, were of the finest Arabian stock, while the men atop them wore the insignia and uniforms, freshly pressed and immaculate, of the 7th Hussars. Tall fur hats, bedecked with short ceremonial tassels, sat upon their heads. Below, their eyes regarded her expressionlessly as she approached, making no move towards her whatsoever. "Good afternoon," she called out, with as much cheer as she could muster. She stole a glance over the rise next to her cottage to the plain that lay adjacent to the sands of the nearby beach. Prone amid the dandelions and summer grass sat regular rows of cavalry, at least two columns' worth, tending to their horses or resting quietly. These were not like the soldiers of the previous year. These were the elite troops of the Republic.

They tipped their caps to her. One spoke. "Good morning, madameoiselle. If you would please step inside," he said, extending a hand toward her own front door.

"I shall indeed step inside," she replied, lifting her chin. "For it is my own house, and I'll thank you to leave no horse refuse upon my front stoop." With that, she stormed in, determined not to be intimidated, which was their obvious goal. No fancy dress soldiers were going to push her around in her house, in her town.

Pushing aside the front door and stomping into the kitchen revealed another infuriating sight. Frying eggs upon her stove was another man in uniform, while a number of men in especially ornate costume and tall peaked hats with feathers on them milled around in her dining room. They surrounded, sitting at her dining table, eating from her plates, a man in a grey overcoat with his back turned to her. "I must beg the pardon of you gentlemen," she declared, setting down her bag and crossing her arms in front of her, a steel glare upon her countenance that sent the nearest uniformed personnel backing a step away, "for not stocking a better larder that you might have taken more pleasure in looting."

The man in the grey overcoat turned, from his seated position. His overcoat was open, revealing a green uniform of the Chasseurs beneath, festooned with medals. Only now did Marguerite notice the wide, crescent-shaped curved hat sitting beside his left hand on the table's edge, with the trademark tricolor cockade decorating the right side. "Ah, there you are," he said, in a businesslike manner, with a lilting, energetic accent. Italian. "It is I who must beg your pardon for using your plates. I was quite hungry."

His face was familiar to all Frenchmen and women, if not from seeing him in person then from his portraits, his descriptions in all the newspapers in France, his trademark grey overcoat, and his famous green uniform. His Corsican accent, almost comically mispronouncing many French words, was unmistakable. "I apologize, Citizen First Consul," Marguerite murmured after a moment, dipping low and bending her knee in a deep curtsy. "Forgive me, I meant no rudeness. I am a loyal citizen of the Republic and of course all that I have is-"

"Yes, yes, yes," he shushed her, making an annoyed face and waving a hand. "Yes, fine, I know all that. Will you please sit down? My valet has made us some eggs on your stove, and they're almost edible." At a gesture one of his lieutenants pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table, where a place had been set. A plate of fried eggs with a side of still-sizzling bacon landed next to it, carried from the cook who hovered over Marguerite's stove by a man in oriental dress with a turban covering his head, clasped with a jewel from which protruded a tall feather. Roustam, Marguerite mentally identified him. The First Consul's Armenian servant, who swore himself to his master's service during the Egypt expedition.

Why is this Man in my kitchen, Marguerite thought to herself as she glided forward, keeping her manner as respectful as possible while she curtsied to each of his officers as she passed, who gallantly doffed their tall hats and bowed, with murmurings of "my lady" and "madameoiselle". She took her seat across from the First Consul, allowing herself to stare at him. Really quite unassuming, she thought, save for the implacable air of command, the presence he exerts over everyone else in the room, and that unquestioned expectation of superiority. It had been some time since Marguerite had been awed by the presence of famous personages, however, and she was hardly one to be swept away in starry-eyed wonder. Rather, pensiveness was all she felt. The presence of greatness was, in her life, almost always a harbinger for disaster. She sat, hands in her lap, appraising him for a moment.

"If you don't eat," he said in response to her look, waving his fork at her plate, "I feed it to the dog." Marguerite, despite herself, smiled at his directness, at which she lifted her fork and began cutting sections off the egg white, lifting them to their mouth; despite also the First Consul's disparaging remarks about the eggs, she found them delicious. To her surprise, she noted an answering smile on his face in response to her own, an infectious, almost boyish grin. "The dog will never realize what a fate he's been spared."

"You're a little harsh, Citizen First Consul," she replied. "They're excellent."

"You may call me Napoleon," he replied, matter-of-factly. "If I may call you Lady Stuart."

There was an audible silence in the room at that point. Neither side of the conversation betrayed any trace of unease, they merely kept eating as they had before, but to all in the room it was as if there was a sudden chill.

"You may call me anything you like, Napoleon," Marguerite said easily, in between mouthfuls. "Is that to be some sort of nickname or code-name? Why Steward in particular?"

"Stuart," Napoleon corrected, holding out a hand, at which point his aide-de-camp opened a leatherbound portfolio in front of him and began to read.

"Lady Margaret Morgana MacAensland Stuart," recited the aide, a young man in his '20s, "born at the stroke of midnight between the 30th and 31st of October 1678, at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland. The child of a Scottish noblewoman from the Highlands and King Charles II of England, conceived as the result of a dark ritual performed in accordance with some ancient rite or other to summon demonic power from the netherworld. Her father and mother had been married prior to her birth in a proper Catholic ceremony, which however still made her a bastard in the eyes of the Churches of England and Scotland."

"How ghastly," said Marguerite, casually chewing her eggs, her eyes wide. "Is this entirely appropriate conversation for breakfast, Napoleon?"

"Raised in Holyrood Abbey until the age of ten," the aide continued, "at which point she was obliged to flee the country to Amsterdam in the face of a Protestant uprising during the invasion of Scotland by the Prince of Orange. The Jesuits, the Inquisition, and the government of Louis XIV planned to groom her to assume the throne of England in the event of a Catholic revolt, but the plan came to nothing when Pope Alexander VIII betrayed King Louis and sided with the Protestant Princes of the League of Augsburg."

Marguerite said nothing, simply continued to stare with casual interest, her mouth full of fried egg, and the aide continued once more.

"Lady Stuart was abandoned in Holland, as were her two governesses, both ostensibly former nuns from Holyrood, but in reality one was a member of a secret druidic cult that apparently believed the young Lady Stuart was the reincarnation of some obscure Celtic deity. While living in Amsterdam she met and became engaged in a passionate romance with a young shipbuilder's apprentice, who later revealed himself to be Peter Romanov of Russia, the Tsar and future Emperor Peter the Great, who was traveling incognito in order to educate himself and his country in the ways of the west. He brought her back to St. Petersburg where they intended to marry, but an unforeseen complication arose when the Tsar began to lose his mind, becoming violent and unstable. Even for a Russian Tsar. An attempted palace coup by the Princess Sophia forced Lady Stuart to flee once more."

Morrigan's eyes by this point were fixed firmly upon her eggs, downcast and unmoving. The aide continued.

"At this point her movements become less certain as she fled eastward. We know she reached as far as China and the court of the Manchoos, and the mountain country of Tibet, and later booked passage even further east to the New World. What we do know is that she surfaced again, in 1743 in the court of Louis XV, disguising herself as a Scottish Jacobin expatriate in the baggage train of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the pretender to the English and Scottish thrones - in fact her first cousin, once removed. In 1744, with a partner who claimed to be a Polish noblewoman named Countess Anna Maria Olga Makarova Sobieski di Navarisi, she executed the most audacious theft in French history, robbing the royal treasury of Versailles by convincing the King that France was undergoing an invasion by the British, later laundering the money through the office of the Doge of Venice, who received a one percent commission upon which his descendants have been living comfortably for the past fifty-seven years. This precipitated an economic crisis in mid-century that many suggest laid the groundwork, for, ahh," there was a pause as the aide glanced up briefly, "the Revolution."

"I know," said Marguerite, gracefully raising an index finger. "This is all the plot of a play, or some drama, isn't it? How delicious! And you'd like to cast me in the title role? I have no experience in the art of the thespian, sir, I'd be utterly unprepared." Napoleon, his eggs finished, merely regarded Marguerite impassively with his arms crossed.

"Her partner, the Contessa di Navarisi, disappeared. It is presumed that Lady Stuart eliminated her in order to help herself to her partner's share of the stolen fortune."

At this, suddenly unable to control herself, Marguerite stiffened, hand gripping her fork in a white-knuckled fist. Her eyes closed, but she could still feel the watchful gaze of Napoleon dropping to her hand, then lifting to her eyes; with care, she placed the fork to the side of her plate, leaning back in her chair. "Perhaps these eggs aren't so well-prepared," she said after a moment. "I felt a sudden twinge in my stomach, as if something didn't agree with me."

"There are, no doubt," Napoleon said, speaking for the first time since his aide began the recitation, "alternative explanations for the Contessa's disappearance. Far less sinister."

"Or far more tragic," Marguerite offered lightly, waving a hand. "In any event, it makes little difference to me. You may write your play as you see fit, this sort of thing is best left to a critic of the theatre."

The aide's flicked back and forth from the lady to the general, before continuing at a nod from his master. "Following the theft, the Lady Stuart assumed a variety of identities as she traveled Europe, settling in one place for a few years before moving on. It is believed that this was done in order to disguise the fact that she exhibited none of the outward physiological changes of aging, whatsoever. Her most notable appearance during this period was a stint as an opera singer during the late '70s and early '80s in Vienna, where she became an intimate of the late Empress, Maria Theresa. In 1798 she arrived in the village of Beauvines, and has been settled here ever since, teaching music to the children of the townspeople."

Marguerite tilted her head. "I see," she said, after a moment, before her face took on a broad smile. "You're basing this play on a highly stylized account of my own life-story. How marvelous! But of course, I am at your service for the title role."

The aide flipped a number of pages, before clearing his throat, and continuing. "Further investigation with the Consulate's sources within, ah, occult agencies, has revealed that in fact the Lady Stuart is an exile from a, shall we say, an alternate plane of reality, as it were, known to those with knowledge of such things as the 'Dark Realm'." Marguerite's eyes, despite themselves, grew wide; a tic caused her right one to twitch. "Their King, a roughly analogous and quite inexact term, is a, ah, creature known as Belial, who sent her into this plane of existence as punishment for her role in some sort of infernal uprising over a century ago. At least by our standards of reckoning time. However, the," the aide interrupted himself, flipping over several sheafs of papers, "ah, administration of this realm has apparently been making overtures for the Lady Stuart's return, due to the ongoing illness, if such is the proper word, of their Dark Lord, and an apparent threat from without; a, um, creature known as a, umm, 'wampyr', who seeks to conquer that world, possibly using this one as a base." Marguerite's head, by this point, had turned, and was looking out the window toward the distant ocean, hands clasped in her lap against the blue material of her dress. The aide continued, flipping more papers. "This would-be conqueror goes by the name of, ah, let me see... Maximoff."

"Maximov," Marguerite murmured in correction, her voice lucid but distant. "Dimitri Maximov. Sophia's choice for Metropolitan of Moscow." Her eyes, though fixed upon the ocean, seemed to Napoleon as he looked upon her to be much further distant indeed. "In another life of course." The aide, sensing a cue of sorts, closed his portfolio and withdrew to a respectful distance.

The room was silent, Napoleon's arms folded atop one another as he leaned forward in his chair, allowing the lady time to collect her thoughts. This she did, her gaze lowering to the wooden floor of her kitchen. "What do you want?" she asked, in a quiet voice, but firm. Her head lifted, fixing Napoleon with a look quite different from the ones she had given him previously. This one was inscrutable. Even alien. "What does the great Napoleon Bonaparte want with me? A creature of the darkness, skulking from one hiding place to another?"

Napoleon leaned back in his chair. There was no satisfaction in his eyes, no sense of triumph or accomplishment. There was only a vague sympathy, tempered by necessity. "Lady Stuart, I need your money," was the simple and candid reply. "To begin with. The Republic is chronically short of funds and the current peace with England is temporary at best."

Golden eyebrows raised quizzically. "'To begin with', Citizen First Consul?" she mimicked. "Why does the sound of that fill me with dread?"

Napoleon lifted a leg over his knee, slipping a hand into his green uniform jacket. "As the rightful heir to the throne of England, you would be in a unique position to assist the Republic following an invasion of the British Isles," he continued, discussing plans for war as casually as another might discuss a shopping list. Poor Marcel had a more difficult time asking if he could come to pay a call, Marguerite thought to herself, noting inwardly how that conversation already seemed like a year ago, in another world. "Naturally we would present you as a direct Catholic descendant of Charles II and your mother, the, ah..." At a gesture the aide moved forward again, opening his folder, Napoleon consulting it momentarily with a finger on the page. "The Duchess of Aensland," he continued, "thus giving you a greater claim than those idiot relatives of your uncle's. You would take the throne and ensure eternal amity and fellowship between the United Kingdom and the Republic."

Marguerite remained unmoving in her chair. "And for what possible reason might I do all this?" she asked.

Napoleon nodded, as if in approval, before snapping his fingers. At that point an individual in civilian dress, a frock coat and beige vest and trousers, unfolded rolls of papers before his master at the center of the table. At the top was a map of Europe. Napoleon stood, hands clasping behind his back. "It has been decided that the only sure means to preserve the values, doctrines, and benefits of the Revolution is the eventual conquest of all Europe," he replied, once again in his trademark matter-of-fact tone. "An Empire. It is a historical inevitability."

"With you as the Emperor, I suppose," Marguerite replied, sighing as she clasped her fingers, leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin upon her knuckles. "Really, sir. Do you imagine I have such personal esteem for you that I would be gratified by your further rise in station?"

Napoleon smiled, palms on the table, bending over his maps. "Much as I'd like to, madameoiselle, I cannot live forever," he replied. "Someone will have to see to the Empire's future when I am gone. It would seem to me," he went on, leaning forward, "that one who is immortal would be in the best possible position to maintain the Empire's cohesion. Such as yourself."

At this, Marguerite was quite taken aback, lowering her arms. "Me?" Her arch demeanor vanished.

Napoleon nodded. "You. A God-Empress, if you will," he stated. "Eternally ruling over the people of the world, forever beautiful, always there for her citizens to look to as a symbol of stability and the continuity of just and stable rule." He leaned back, tossing a hand. "There are many ways this could be done. Staged inter-marriage with my line, a succession of regnal titles, before long, perhaps in a century or two, we wouldn't even need to keep up the pretense that each successive Queen was a different person." He looked back at her. "You know how it is with children. You can't trust them to accomplish your will. They will always feel the need to think independently, differently, even when it means failing to see reason. You, on the other hand, will guide the Empire with a single, clear vision."

"Yours," she offered, dropping her head, her tone expressionless. But at this, Napoleon only shrugged.

"If you like," he replied affably. "The point is not whose vision unites our world. The point is that it is united." At a glance, the man in civilian clothes removed the map of Europe, revealing a charcoal sketch beneath it. Despite the clarity of the rendering, the features of the creature depicted were vague and indistinct. Large black eyes, round, oversized cranium, simple holes for a nose and weak chin, clearly not human. Marguerite's eyes flicked down towards it, then back up again, waiting for her would-be Emperor and partner in a conspiracy to explain its significance. "You see, our world, 'La Terre', is quite valuable. We are covered in water. In fact it is the majority of our world's surface area, according to my cartographers. It has recently come to our attention that few other worlds in the aether beyond our planet share the same wealth, and their resources are soon exhausted by over-population."

Marguerite, in fact, could barely understand what he was saying. "What?" Or, at least, did not believe she understood him correctly.

"Recently," said Napoleon, reaching forward and pulling another sketch out from under the first, laying them side by side, "we have made contact with extra-terrestrial entities seeking asylum." The second sketch depicted a field, with men in Cuirassier uniforms of the Army meeting a group of tall, willowy beings with heads like the one depicted in the first sketch, emerging from a gangway extending beneath a large, flatly ovular disk. "They inform us that the reason our world has not been discovered already is because the rest of the surrounding universe is apparently engaged in some sort of large-scale conflict. Many races battle against some being, or beings, allegedly composed of pure energy. However, it appears now that they are decidedly losing, and peace, the peace of ruthless and implacable conquest, may be at hand; given the size of our water reserves, our newfound friends made it clear to us that someday someone will desire our water supply enough to obtain it, AT ANY COST." His vehemence implied a dire cost indeed.

Blinking her eyes, her mouth parting, Marguerite hurriedly stood up from her chair and leaned over the table, picking up the second sketch and gaping openly. "A life-form," Napoleon continued, leaning back, "entirely alien to our own. An entirely different model of Creation."

"I don't believe it," Marguerite whispered, in shock, a sketch in each hand as she looked from one and then to the other. "It's not possible..."

Napoleon Bonaparte's smile returned. "A living, breathing demon of the netherworld, standing there and telling me that life beyond our Earth is impossible? I must remember this moment. At last I fully understand 'irony'." He turned to his officers for confirmation of his _bon mot_, for which they chuckled dutifully.

Marguerite lowered the papers to her sides, staring wide-eyed at the First Consul. "And why, pray tell me sir, do you expect that I will believe this insanity? You have proof, I trust?"

Napoleon's eyes flicked sideways to the man in civilian clothes who had provided the sketches, and gave a quick nod. When Marguerite turned to look, however, the man was no longer there. Instead, standing in his place with the same grey frock-coat and beige vest and trousers, was a creature much like the one in the sketch. His disproportionate head was quite large in the cranium and small in the jaw; his skull was completely bald, skin like white leather, with small veins and furrows; his immense eyes, like the darkest obsidian. Marguerite gasped and took a few stumbling steps backward, dropping the sketches she held, which lazily arced to the floor; her hand flew to her mouth. The creature turned to her and inclined its head, in a gesture precisely like that of a human.

"Citizen Berrault is one of our recent immigrants," Napoleon informed her. "He has sworn his oath of loyalty to the Republic, and is a firm adherent to our cause. He and his people wish to make their home here, with us, and assist us in our plans in any way they are capable."

Overcoming her shock, Marguerite summoned the necessary manners to return the nod, before turning to stare at Napoleon with an aghast expression. "Plan...? You don't mean to imply by your most fashionably indifferent attitude that you actually have a PLAN?"

Napoleon stared at her, his eyebrows raising, as if such a thing were the most natural in the world. "Of course I have a plan," he replied, his tone in measured evenness. "As the ruler of the world, you direct the development of technologies necessary to repel invasion, or the subjugation of our species. You negotiate with this 'Dark Realm' from whence you came for their alliance, or perhaps even assist this 'Maximoff' fellow with his plans for a takeover should they prove unwilling to listen to reason. Meanwhile, you make every effort to make our civilization as attractive as possible to alien outsiders."

Marguerite's arms crossed. "I trust the word 'attractive' as opposed to 'un-attractive' was intentional and not a slip."

Napoleon smiled. "Quite right. You see, we wish to encourage the tourism of extra-terrestrial civilizations. Get them to spend money. Grow accustomed to taking their holidays here." He began to pace back and forth, his tone growing in weight and solemnity, as his chin lifted to stare thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Taking the waters at a spa, attending the opera, plays, games of chance, dress balls, all the amenities our civilization might have to offer. Extend them generous lines of credit. At which point, they become obliged to protect us. Even, as time goes on, indebted to us. Over generations, with some judicious cultural influence, even _dominated_ by us. The Empire, begun here in your modest kitchen with its half-empty larder, soon grows to encompass the universe. Rather than victim to those who would conquer us, we become their masters.

"Or rather," he added, ceasing his pace and turning to regard Marguerite, "you become their mistress. Humankind - and demonkind, the other half of your heritage - will prosper."

"Why should I commit myself to this enterprise?" she said, after a moment, her voice thoughtful rather than rancorous. "You ask me to dedicate my existence to it, possibly for centuries, on the vague threat that sometime in an unseen future our world may be in danger. You assume my attachment to humanity is greater than it has a right to be. Your kind has caused me nothing but pain. For what reason should I be in such a hurry to save it?"

Napoleon took a breath through his nose. "Unfortunately, the needs of warfare will, in the very near future, require universal male conscription," was his answer. "Including this village."

"Is that a threat?" she hissed, lowering her head and narrowing her eyes.

His gaze met hers evenly. "Not at all," he replied. "It is a deal. Cast your lot with us, and this town and all its citizens will be forgotten. It will vanish from the tax rolls, and will be free of Consular Inspectors, impressment gangs, or censors. In short, this town will be forgotten by history, free to live its tranquil existence unmolested." His eyebrows raised. "Now do I have your interest?"

Marguerite stood there, rubbing a hand up and down her opposite arm, staring at him.

"Wouldn't it be nice," carefully added Napoleon Bonaparte, after a long moment, "to have a purpose in life? A future?"

As it turned out, the grocer had mistakenly given Marguerite the incorrect amount of change. He'd sent his apprentice to her cottage to refund the difference, who had discovered the mounted Hussars before her doorstep and their fellows on the nearby plain. Spinning around and running at top speed, he had alerted his master, who had roused the townspeople with the news. Every available body, the mayor marching at their head, had descended upon the Cottage D'Ains-la-terre just as Napoleon's marshals were emerging, followed by the re-disguised Citizen Berrault, then Marguerite, her arms crossed and looking pensive, and lastly, the illustrious First Consul himself, cocked hat perched once more upon his head. At his appearance, the shocked townspeople took off their hats, bowed or curtsied, as the mayor presented his knee. "Citizen First Consul!" he declared, as Napoleon bade him rise with an irritated half-frown and an upwardly waving hand. "This is an entirely unexpected honor. Might I take this opportunity to declare my unwavering loyalty to the Consulate, in whom the future of France is properly entrusted-"

"Yes, yes, yes, of course," Napoleon interrupted him, shushing him with a wave of his hand. "Unfortunately for you I shall be testing that loyalty immediately, as I'm afraid I must take your charming music teacher back with me."

Those in the front of the press of people who heard this piece of information quickly passed it on to those standing closer to the rear, and quiet confusion quickly reigned amid their ranks. Marguerite quickly stepped forward to Marcel, with a stunned look on his face, standing a few feet from the mayor. "I'm sorry Marcel," she told him, taking his hands. "I won't be able to go to that dance with you after all. There is a stray cat who visits my house on occasion, her name is Felicia, will you please be sure to feed her?" Through the front door, Napoleon's valets were carrying a few suitcases, Marguerite's dresses and a few necessary items she'd gathered in a hurry, including her beloved Stradivarius violin.

While Marcel was stuttering in the affirmative, the mayor turned to Napoleon with a bewildered expression. "M-my lord Consul," he stammered. "What did she do?"

Napoleon frowned at him, before holding up his arms. "Listen to me, all of you!" he called out to the crowd, stepping into their midst. "The Lady Marguerite is no criminal or fugitive, and she does not leave you all lightly. On behalf of the Republic I have humbly requested her to do a great service for us, and like a true patriot she has agreed. One day, history will look back on the city of Beauvaix and say, 'here is where it began'. You may tell your grandchildren and they may tell theirs, that you were there, that you were all witnesses."

"Beauvines, Citizen First Consul," the aforesaid Lady Marguerite calmly informed him, her eyes swiveling sideways.

"As I said," Napoleon replied, without skipping a beat.

"Is that a fact," said the Mayor, wide-eyed in his newfound admiration, all the confusion having vanished from his face. "Do you hear, mes amis?" He turned to his constituents. "Our beloved music teacher goes to help the Republic!" His hat raised in the air as he waved it. "Vive la mademoiselle Marguerite! Remember us, for we are always your friends! Vive Napoleon!" The crowd cheered its assent, at which Marguerite forced a smile, dropping her eyes graciously to accept their praise.

"Now then," said Napoleon, when the vivats had died down slightly, offering Marguerite his arm. "We go!" She clasped it, her eyes still downcast as she did her best to hide her reluctance, and together they strode to Napoleon's waiting carriage just over the rise, her townspeople waving still waving their hats and cheering behind her. "Remember Beauvines!" they cried happily. "You will always have a home here with us!" The town was ecstatic. Their town was to be immortalized forever in the pages of history.

"Citizen First Consul," said Marguerite, as Napoleon helped her mount the step into the waiting carriage; he himself was to ride on horseback. "I'm afraid I feel a little ill, sir."

"Poo-poo," was the reply. "The waters of the Seine will cure all that." And the door slammed behind her.  
---

As the sun broke behind her over the rolling plains beyond the highway, Morrigan finally reached the beach, letting her toes mix with the wet sand as the waves washed over her bare feet. Before her, casting shadows over the grass and brambles, weatherbeaten stones arranged in roughly square formations demarcated the former outlines of foundations, or what might have been them at one time. Hills rose into the distance, forming more cliffs, that might have once served as a town's northern boundary line. Across the waters beyond the beach, sailboats plied the windy waters, while at the horizon an oil supertanker slowly chugged its way south. There was little to set this patch of land apart from any other in the vicinity, save for a few lonely stone posts that stood out in the water, which might have once been the supports for a dock but now only provided a resting place for gulls in between their wheelings across the sky.

Morrigan trudged up the slowly rising grassy hill to the point where it leveled out, into a plain that stretched back to the highway. Finding a plot of ground that seemed no different from any other plot of ground, she sat down cross-legged, leaning back on her arms, and stared for a little while across the blue waters of the bay. When the sun was much higher in the sky, she stood up again, and walked back to where her car was parked, then continued her journey on the road to Brest.


	2. Chapter 2

The Via Caravelli in Venice lies to the east of the Piazza San Marco, down several lesser canals and past several Renaissance-era villas, which were once quite lovely, but later inevitably succumbed to the ravages of time and centuries of water damage. Off what is considered the beaten path, yet still within sight of the _campanile_, the Caravelli provides the occasional visitor a touch of the exotic, a chance to feel they've one-upped their fellow tourists. Occult and rare booksellers lie tucked within the slightly run-down but still elegant buildings, along with several betting parlors, a few small cafes, a small shop selling hand-crafted puppets, and a tiny bed and breakfast rumored to have once hosted James McNeill Whistler, who purportedly was to later use the little hostelry's now-dilapidated front entrance as the inspiration for his sketch, "The Doorway". The proprietor is a Calabrian named Giorgio who insists that his ancestor was an illegitimate offspring of Stendhal.

The one who called herself Morrigan Aensland was no stranger to the city of Venice, and a little judicious research into this highly questionable background, from a few of her more trusted sources, revealed that the bed and breakfast was in fact a former safehouse for the KGB during the Cold War, and that Giorgio's true identity was that of one Georg Semyonovich Neretzky, once a full-bird Colonel in the Soviet state security apparatus. When she brought it up with him over a few shots of vodka one evening, he merely shrugged and nodded his head. "That is the truth," he replied, in his entirely unbelievable attempt at a Calabrian drawl. "After the Soviet Union fell to pieces I did not particularly care to return. I applied for asylum and changed my name to my cover alias, and I've lived a good life ever since. All the idiot tourists want to stay in _palazzos_ on the Grand Canal, they are all money and no character, I get the ones who want to see a little bit of _Venezia minore_, the real Venice, the Venice of the day-to-day life, they have less money but more character."

Morrigan's brow furrowed, her head tilting back against the rough wood of the wall adjacent to their little table in Giorgio's backroom. Their respective shot-glasses were in the process of forming pyramids on the tabletop. "So why don't you tell people the truth?" she suggested, her voice slurring just a touch from the Stoli. "That'd be some great word of mouth advertising. Stay the night in an old KGB safehouse, swap stories with a retired Cold Warrior, listen to dirty jokes once told by Leonid Brezhnev."

Giorgio let out a grunt of dismissal, to show what he thought of THAT idea. "No one would believe such a ridiculous tale," he informed her. "So what if it is true? You cannot tell people the truth. No one wishes to hear the truth. They never believe it, even if it is staring them in their faces. I was a terrible field agent, if you must know. But I was effective at maintaining my cover, because no one could imagine that anyone speaking in a thick Slavic accent, with lots of men and women in trenchcoats coming in and out of his little hotel at all hours of the night, could be anything but an innkeeper catering to the highly profitable market there is in facilitating adultery." He downed another shot of vodka, placing the glass upside down upon his growing scale model of Djoser's step-pyramid at Saqqara. "It is not enough for people to believe something even if it happens all the time, regularly, right in front of their noses and forever half-shut eyes. In order for people to accept the truth, it must also be _mundane_. Boring. Without sparkle or luster or any kind of thrill. The best place to hide is always in plain sight, and I should know, because it is how I made my living. Do you know what I mean?"

Morrigan leaned back and curled her arms behind her head, wiggling her glass between her teeth, up and down. "Unh-hunh," she grunted. "Lil' bit."

It was a bit more difficult for Morrigan to find what it was she'd actually come to see in Venice, and on the Via Caravelli in particular. Despite not being in plain sight, it proved more difficult to locate than it had been to uncover Giorgio's past. No one had ever heard of the place, hinting at either poor location and advertising, or a highly exclusive clientele. She eventually found what she was looking for in a house once owned by the infamous Bartoli gang, since dispersed after Marco Bartoli vanished under mysterious circumstances in China. Many of the locals gave it a wide berth, believing it to be haunted. However, when Morrigan arrived by speedboat (the preferred mode of travel on the Caravelli, since only tourists travel by gondola) on her third day in the city, she found a very pleasant, well-maintained facade, with a popular wedding planner's on the ground floor and a few small law offices up the stairs. On the top floor, at the end of a hallway paneled in ancient brown oak, was a single door: 'Fortunetelling!' Highly stylized but faded letters and an exclamation point formed an arc above smaller, less flamboyant words below. 'Madame Rose, Teller of Fortunes. Cards Drawn, Palms Read, Birth Signs Divined. Put the Ancient Knowledge of the Gypsies to Work in Your Life! Inquire Within.'

A few knocks on the door and quiet, discreet hallos to whoever might have been inside yielded no results. Morrigan was pondering her next move when a diffident tap on the shoulder and a soft sound of a throat clearing caused her to turn in surprise, not the least of which because she'd heard no one on the stairs or coming down the hall.

Standing there was a tall woman with classic Mediterranean features, with long, wavy hair so black it almost seemed purple. She was clad in a bright red dress, decorative yellow buttons in front along with a wide leather belt about the waist, tilted at a rakish angle. The dress fell off the shoulders and sported a scandalously plunging neckline, but rather than revealing any cleavage she wore a sleeveless purple turtleneck beneath. A yellow scarf twined about her elbows and behind her back. Dark hose and sensible red pumps completed the picture, along with oversized sunglasses across her face; to Morrigan she had the gaudy, Euro-fashionable look of an Italian TV star, rather than a fortuneteller, if in fact that was who she was. All she needed was a Prada bag with the tremulously quivering head of a Pekinese peeking out. "Madame Rose?" Even to her own ears, Morrigan's voice was a little squeaky.

The woman's eyebrows lifted slightly behind her the frames of her sunglasses. "I am Rosetta Gioconda della Vega, yes? This is my shop."

At that moment Morrigan was seized by an inexplicable perversity, her head tilting to the side with an inquisitive look. "Can you read my mind and guess why I'm here?" A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

Rose, however, sniffed through her nose in irritation. "No, I cannot," she replied, putting a hand on her hip, the other carrying a paper bag full of groceries, a baguette sticking up at an awkward angle. "I am not a _psychic_, miss, I am a fortuneteller." A long piano-finger rose to indicate the sign on her door. "While I do not deny that such talents may be possible, I am quite incapable of performing them." She switched her grocery bag to her opposite arm, fumbling in her purse.

"So you just predict the future?" Morrigan asked, holding out her arms helpfully. The bag was roughly deposited there a moment later, the baguette diagonally blocking her view of Rose producing a key to unlock the front door.

"No, I don't do that either," Rose replied, twisting the key and swinging the door wide with an obliging series of creaks. She took one step in the doorway, turned to face Morrigan, and retrieved her grocery bag in both arms. "You can't predict the future, it simply isn't possible. The future is always in a state of flux. If someone were to, for example, actually SEE their future, at that very moment it would change forever. Nothing they saw would ever come true, because knowledge of the outcome would change their actions. You can only make educated guesses about the things to come, and even then, those who are actually good at doing so invariably work in the stock market."

Morrigan's feet shuffled, brow furrowing. "But you tell fortunes," she said in a small voice, diffidently raising a finger.

Rose brusquely nodded her head. "I do," she replied. "I quip vague and flowery gnomic aphorisms based upon the general shapes and outlines I see within the patterns of a person's life, and charge ridiculous amounts of money to the wealthy and gullible for doing so." She leaned forward slightly to peer at Morrigan behind her shaded lenses, appraising the other woman up and down. Morrigan found herself shrinking from the subtle force of the woman's scrutiny. "You do not strike me as especially gullible, so I can only assume you're here for something else."

A moment of silence passed between them before Morrigan's inner resolve returned to her. She straightened her back, looked Rose in the eyes - or at least, the lenses of her sunglasses - and set her feet. "I don't want my fortune told," she said. "I don't want to know about my future. I want you to tell me about my past."

In response, Rose slowly pulled off her sunglasses and let out a small sound of satisfaction. "Ahhh," she murmured, the sound rising and falling in pitch. Now, apparently, Morrigan had captured her interest. "No one ever wants to know about their past," she said, a note of conspiratoriality entering her tone. "Despite the fact that it contains even more mysteries than the future, everyone believes that they have their past all figured out. Except, it would seem, for you," she added.

"No one remembers their own birth," Morrigan replied, her face betraying no expression. "More importantly, no one can point to a single, random day on a calendar and say, I remember exactly all the things I did that day." She shrugged. "How can anyone truly imagine that they have all of that empty space figured out? If anyone really sat down and thought to themselves how much of their lives are a complete mystery, they wouldn't sleep so soundly."

After a moment, Rose turned into her lair, beckoning Morrigan forward with a waving hand. "Come in, come in. Welcome to my humble little storefront. Would you like an _apéritif_? I may have some cognac or a cheap _vino_."

Morrigan followed her inside to the dark little abode behind the door. Whatever she had expected of a fortuneteller's establishment, this wasn't it. Several ornate mahogany bookshelves lined each wall, containing titles printed in various languages, almost all dealing either with occult subjects or with the powers of the mind, save for one spirally-bound folder printed in English, appearing to be a CIA document related to poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia: "Khun Sa, the Taliban, and General Vega - Warlords of Opium Cultivation, 1985-Present". The carpet was thick, dark, and fluffy, Morrigan's sandaled toes sinking in comfortably. Several exquisitely crafted high-backed chairs surrounded a long teakwood table, one candle burning upon a candelabra in the center. "No thank you," she called out to Rose, who was disappearing through another door adjoining the room. "No crystal ball?" she called to the doorway.

Rose reappeared a moment later with two crystal goblets instead. Her pumps had vanished, stocking feet making trails in the carpeting. "Water," she said, depositing the glasses on the tabletop. "For later." Settling to a chair, she crossed one leg daintily over the other, and bid Morrigan to sit on the chair next to hers. "Crystal balls," she remarked, as Morrigan settled in, "have no practical use whatsoever that I can determine. I have a theory that they keep the attention of the customers upon the ball, while the fortuneteller has her eyes upon their face, watching for visual cues. But I have no first-hand knowledge." She waved a hand in dismissal, then leaned forward. "Now listen to me carefully." Her eyes shone in the candlelight. "You may see things that you might not have been witness to. You may see things that have nothing to do with the answers you seek. The only thing I can tell you after long experience is that every life touches every other life in ways so complex that no one can perceive the whole picture. It might make sense to you right away, or it might remain a mystery your whole life. I'm not offering you any sort of explanation." She took a breath. "Only a glimpse. Do you understand?"

Morrigan nodded her head, then reached sideways and took a few sips of the water. "I understand," she said. "What do I have to do?"

Rose held out her arms, palms upraised. "Give me your hands," she said.

One of Morrigan's eyebrows quirked upwards, a mock-plaintive tone in her voice. "Will I get them back?"

"Possibly," Rose replied. "Feeling lucky?"

With not a little hesitation, Morrigan reached out her hands, and clasped Rose's tightly.

-------  
Edinburgh, Scotland, 12:09 am - 31 October 1678

Rain drummed against the parapets and spires of Holyrood Abbey, night-shrouded clouds emptying their stores upon the roofs and streets of the city of Edinburgh. Gas-lamps and fires sputtered in the onslaught. Heedless of the weather, speeding up to the Abbey gate was an ornate horse-drawn carriage, its pilot whipping the horses into a frenzy, their mouths flecking with foam as they raced the whip's sting down the street. The occupant of the carriage, a tall, distinguished man with the red robes and broad hat of a Cardinal, employed exercises to calm his beating heart and slow his anxious breathing. He was a man very good at his job. Badges and the insignia of a Grand Inquisitor upon his cassock attested to this fact, as well as attesting to his high standing within the Society of Jesus. Additional devices, inscrutable to the outsider, also proclaimed his position within the Holy Inquisition's elite division for covert action, the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith, charged with the sacred task of gathering information for the Holy See; they were additionally bestowed with the rare but sacred honor of dealing with any unpleasant but necessary duties considered too coarse and weighted with sin for the delicacy of the papal fingers. He'd slipped unnoticed into the country while entry into Scotland for Catholics at the time was all but impossible; and while the Kirk, the Scottish Parliament house, had offered a bounty for the head of any Jesuit. For the head of Cardinal Albert Simon, personal confidante and advisor to the Sun King of the hated French, Louis XIV, one could only imagine how such a bounty would grow. With a smirk of satisfaction, the Cardinal imagined that it would fetch a high price indeed.

As the carriage pulled up to the gate, the passenger door was flung open from within. The Cardinal, quite spry for his advanced age, practically flung himself from the coach as well in his eagerness to gain entrance. "Where's Sergius?" he demanded of the assembled nuns and monks who'd stepped forward to greet him, their plain brown robes and bald pates a marked contrast to Simon's scarlet robes, his cassock and golden decorative badges of holy office. Several had bowed, reaching their hands forward to kiss the cardinal's papal signet ring, but his brusqueness and urgency startled them with its intensity. "The abbot!" Simon shouted, his pearl-handled cane slamming against the ground in white-hot annoyance. "Where's the _Abbot_! Conduct me to him at once!" Bowing and scraping, fearful of the cardinal's rage, they moved aside, for it was said that many heretics had found their way to Hell early beneath the flames of his anger. Two attendants opened the wrought-iron gate, Simon gliding his way through like a crimson avenging angel, cowering monks following in his wake.

Attendants and door guards bowed as Simon's footsteps thudded against the weathered stone - he simply brushed by them, raising his fingers quickly in impatient blessings as he made his way to the chapel. The distant notes of monks chanting compline resounded from somewhere in the abbey complex, providing an eerie accompaniment for the anxious procession. Near the chapel entrance waited the Abbot of Holyrood, Brother Sergius, flanked by the abbess of the adjacent nunnery, Mother Superior Angeline. It was only then that Simon, slowing his purposeful stride, deigned to reach his hand forward that the two might kneel and kiss the ring. "You found him?" he demanded.

"Indeed, your grace," intoned Sergius, straightening up, his face and manner grave, extending a hand toward the chapel as he stepped to one side, though the cardinal paused a moment to hear the abbot's report. "A team discovered them involved in some kind of ritual near Loch Maree to the North. He was quite mad, your grace. Raving and shouting, his body twisting unnaturally." The cardinal nodded curtly and proceeded into the chapel. "We brought him back," Sergius continued, following behind the train of the cardinal's cassock. "Him, and one other."

"One... other?" Simon's brow had only time to furrow before he crossed the narthex to enter the chapel proper, slowly moving to a stop as the scene assailed him. The stench of death pervaded the room like reeking camphor, a sickly-sweet odor of decaying meat and rotting eggs. Illuminated by the flickering light of torches, blood was everywhere; on the altar-cloths, on the wooden pews nearby, on the vestments of the nuns who stood a grim vigil, bowing their heads at the Cardinal's presence, at each side of a table set before the altar, beneath the crucifix mounted on the wall, Christ staring in what seemed to be stunned incomprehension at the scene below Him. Blood dripped from the table to the stone floor, still liquid and warm, each drop ticking off another second that Cardinal Simon stared, dumbfounded, by the carnage before him, until he focused on the table... The table that had been set before the altar held a single human form, face and upper body covered by a white burial shroud stained with red; only the edge of slender calves and delicate feet were visible, red blotches discoloring the otherwise ivory perfection of their skin, a wide, thick, slick trail of blood coursing from between her legs, coating the sides of the tablecloth. Slowly, Simon's gaze turned to the table's side, where a sobbing man clutched a pale hand from this ghostly form, slack and unresponsive, between the two of his. The man's hair was grey, disheveled; an aristocratic black periwig had been tossed carelessly onto a pew nearby. He was dressed only in his underclothes, and to Simon seemed a small, shriveled shell of a man, tears streaming down his face. "Mother of God!" Simon whispered, the normally unflappable Inquisitor quite speechless. "It's an _abbatoir_ in here..." His shocked gaze settled upon the covered corpse. "Who in the name of the Blessed Virgin was this unfortunate creature?"

"A Highlander woman, from a noble clan," intoned Sergius as he moved forward, speaking quickly close to the Cardinal's ear, the only sound in the room save for the sobbing man and the dull wheezing groan of the weather outside. "She was with him when they were found." Sergius took a breath, turned and nodded to a priest that stood at the corner of the room, pale and drawn, mopping his brow, who then stepped forward at Sergius' indication. "She was pregnant, and claimed the child was his. She insisted the only way to cure his madness was to marry the two of them before the child was born. Father MacGregor," he murmured, indicating the priest, "performed the ceremony upon our return, upon which the girl's water broke. It was a proper Catholic ceremony. Under the Church, they are married, although I doubt the Anglicans or the Presbytery would see things in the same light. The child was delivered right there before the altar not ten minutes prior to your arrival... at the stroke of Midnight."

Cardinal Simon's eyes didn't move from the terrible scene in front of him, until he executed a double-take, his eyebrows rising in open astonishment. His head whipped around to stare at Sergius, then at the priest, mouth dropping open. Father MacGregor bowed his head reverently at the legendary Inquisitor's notice. "Your Eminence."

"They're _married_?" Simon blurted out, a whisper in shock. "There's a _child_?"

MacGregor bowed a second time, as Sergius nodded his head, eyes narrowing at the depth of Simon's reaction. "Indeed, your grace. A girl. It was a difficult birth," he murmured, eyeing the corpse in repose. "The mother did not survive it. The baby is being tended to. May I ask-" He was cut off abruptly by Simon's raised hand, gloved in red, as the cardinal stepped forward purposefully, brushing past the bowed heads of the nuns, walking up to the kneeling, sobbing, woeful man holding the corpse's hand.

"Your majesty," Simon murmured, placing his cane against the birthing table and dropping to one knee, placing a hand on the man's shoulder. "It is I, my lord. Albert Simon. Do you recognize me?"

Cheeks stained by copious tears, dirt, and what appeared to be soot, small cuts dotting both his cheeks as well as his hands, the man Albert Simon called lord raised his head to stare upon the cardinal's face, his own face rheumily quivering with fear, disorientation, and uncertainty; it was a face Simon knew well from his days at the French court, when the withered husk before him was a cynical, brooding young man, a prince in exile, his father beheaded by Cromwell and that blackguard's screaming Roundhead mob. Charles Stuart. The young man who had returned in triumph to become Charles II, King of England and Scotland. "Wh-where am I?" he whispered, eyes clouded by premature age. "Albert? Why am I in this dark place? Is Louis angry with me?"

Simon shook his head. "No my lord," he murmured, opening his arms, receiving the royal presence in a comforting embrace, the King erupting in choking sobs against his breast. "You've been ill." His hands brushed through Charles' long, wispy grey hair, growing from the parts of his head that could still grow hair; his eyes turned toward Sergius, motioning the monk forward. The Brother did so, followed by Mother Angeline and Father MacGregor, the nuns following uncertainly behind. "There, there, my lord," whispered Simon, his voice a soothing, melodious tone of comfort, as he methodically pulled the royal mane to one side, exposing the King's neck. "Soon you'll be all better..." At the nape of King Charles' neck lay a discolored, oval-shaped wound, still fresh, blood slowly leaking from within to trickle down Charles' back beneath his shirt.

Sergius gasped, taking a fearful step backwards. Angeline clutched her rosary, face tightening. The nuns, brave enough to weather what must have been a frightening birth, quickly crossed themselves and fled the room. Father MacGregor found a way to turn a few shades paler and quietly followed after the nuns, pulling out a metal flask and taking a long draught of whatever spirits he kept within. "It's unmistakable," whispered Sergius, first to break the silence. "Only one thing can make a neck wound like that. That point at which a demon finds easiest access into the bodies of human beings." He turned to Angeline. "The child. It's father was possessed. It must be killed immediately!"

Simon's gaze was flat, and unblinking, turning from Sergius to Angeline and back. "Absolutely _not_," he declared, before Angeline could open her mouth, silencing further discussion. He did so calmly but with a flatness that implied an unquestionable authority. Slowly the Cardinal turned back to the sobbing form against him, pressed his hands to its cheeks, and gently pulled away so that he might look the King in the eye. "My lord," he murmured, his voice once again in the soft, gentle tone he used to soothe even the hot temper of monarchs such as Louis XIV. "You have sinned." Charles' face clenched, a moan escaping his throat, before Simon with both hands shook the royal head insistently, willing the man to listen. "Grievously you have sinned. Being at heart a good man, your mind has blocked out the terrible thing you have done. It may return, in time. But a woman lies dead. A horrible act has been committed, for which you must atone." His eyes bored into the king's, imposing his will upon the weaker-willed monarch, much as the demon that had inhabited his body might well have done.

"Wh-what must I do?" whispered the morose monarch, voice quavering, when it seemed to him that Simon was waiting for a response. "I'll do anything..."

Simon nodded his head. "To confess your sins is the first step upon the path of righteousness, my lord. To be absolved, however, will take an even firmer dedication. First, you must abandon your earthly ways. Cease the undignified womanizing that has characterized your reign. Second..." Simon's head tilted, as if tightening the screw inside Charles' head. "You must return to the Holy Mother Church," the cardinal whispered. From the corner of his eye, Simon could glimpse with not a little satisfaction the image of Sergius' mouth going slack and dropping open. "Renounce your oath to the Presbytery and to the Church of England. Return your people to the welcoming arms of the Holy Father, who yearns only for the welfare of their souls. Do you understand?" His hands finally moved from Charles' cheeks, the monarch dropping his head, whimpering softly. It could have been a nod, or perhaps a fugue of complete unreason as the man retreated withing himself. Simon put a steady hand upon the top of the king's head, murmured a swift prayer, and then stood. "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." He made the sign of the cross with two fingers above the King's head. "Go in peace, my son."

King Charles was led away by two novices, who were to take him to a waiting carriage, conveying him to the Kirk and a return trip to England. It would, in fact, greatly benefit Holyrood Abbey to return the King so helpfully, proving that while they practiced their Papist enormities, they were still loyal Scots first and foremost. At the time of King Charles' departure from the monastery, Cardinal Simon was lifting the edge of the shroud that covered the corpse's face, his head tilted back and nose wrinkled distastefully, when Sergius walked up to him. The monk's expression was muted, but full of intense emotion, though one the Cardinal found largely inscrutable. Simon thought he looked rather like a growling poodle. "He's been missing for _nine months_," Brother Sergius grated, tossing a hand toward the direction the departing King took to exit the chapel. His tone became more caustic as he folded his arms over his chest. "What are they going to say? Lost on a hunt?"

Simon turned his regal gaze toward Sergius, his reply offhand and dismissive, a mere detail. "The English Parliament has invented a plot," he replied, nodding matter-of-factly as he let the cloth of the shroud drop back over the face of the nameless dead Highlander girl. "A man named Titus Oates is spreading rumors that there's a Jesuit plan to assassinate the king." He snorted, a pleased smirk on his face, gratified that his order had such a fearsome reputation among the heretic rabble. "Therefore the King can't go out in public out of fear for his safety. That sort of nonsense." The Cardinal allowed himself a smile. "How ironic that they'd guessed our plan so closely. Though perhaps because of tonight we won't have to stick his idiot brother James on the throne just yet." Charles' brother James was unrepentantly Catholic, and had been so most of his life, making him a much better choice for the twin thrones of England and Scotland. The moment the Jesuits had learned of older brother Charles' disappearance, plans had been set in motion to track him down and eliminate him, but now, it seemed, fate had dealt them an even better hand than the one they held before. "The child was a girl, you say? Imagine another Virgin Queen, Sergius. Another Glorianna, just like that scrap of Welsh offal Elizabeth. Only this one neither bastard nor heretic."

Sergius' next statement was controlled, but his voice trembled ever so slightly. "You've damned us all," he growled, upper lip quivering in righteous anxiety. "The child was conceived by a man possessed. It's unclean!"

Cardinal Simon's gaze turned to meet the abbot's, his gaze unwavering and cold, voice level. "The child - a girl, you said? - is a legitimate, Catholic heir, borne of noble blood, to the thrones of England and Scotland, married in the bosom of the Church at this very abbey." He really is a simple man, the Cardinal thought to himself. Naive, and so comfortably ruled by dogma that he might assuage his fear of the terrible world around him.

"It's a _demon_!" Sergius replied angrily, his fists clenching, face contorting in fury. "Could our duty to the Lord be any the clearer?"

"My dear abbot." Simon's voice had turned hard, no longer seeking to accommodate the slow, weak perambulations of an inferior mind. He turned to face the monk, imperious authority radiating from him like rays of light. "You talk to me of _duty_? His Holiness the Pope Innocent XI, His Most Catholic Majesty King Louis de Bourbon, and I as well, would gladly see the DEVIL HIMSELF," Simon's voice emphasized these last two words so loudly and clearly that Sergius would be unable to escape them, "happily seated upon the thrones of St. George and St. Andrew _both_ if it could somehow return this island to the embrace of the Holy Mother Church. Do you understand?" Sergius could only stare at him, wide-eyed. "The fires of _hell itself_," Simon went on, "are a small price to pay to save the souls of so many. THERE is where our duty lies. To the congregation of all good Catholic believers, who have placed the trust of God upon us. Would you dare speak such filth to them, as you have so freely to me, of abandoning them because your faith is clouded by doubt?" Their gazes were locked for what seemed an eternity, until Sergius dropped his, head bowed in a respectfully defeated posture. It had not taken that much effort. The Cardinal had broken much stronger men in his years with the Inquisition.

With finality, Cardinal Simon brusquely straightened his gloves, lifted his cane - eyeing the blood coating its iron tip distastefully - and turned to take his leave. "I must go," he informed the abbot. "I must report on this matter to the Holy See in Rome. I place the child in your responsibility until my return. Keep it safe." One last, intense gaze. "Remember. The very future of the Holy Mother Church in all the British Isles is resting upon your unworthy shoulders. Trust in our Lord, and do not waver." And with that, Cardinal Albert Simon strode out of the chapel, leaving Sergius before the altar with his head bowed.

Other monks in residence at the monastery, as well as the odd custodial worker in residence, soon moved in to dispose of the body and clean the blood. Sergius mutely stepped aside to allow them their duties, when a young nun entered the chapel, skittered up to Sergius and softly but insistently cleared her throat. "Brother Abbot."

Sergius jerked a bit, looking up at her; her hands were clasped together in front of her stomach, eyes lowered. "Yes?" His voice seemed distant, withdrawn, even to himself. The girl opened and closed her mouth, her head listing sideways as she tried to compose what she was trying to say. "Yes, out with it?" barked Sergius with impatience.

"You must come see," she finally blurted, eyes finally darting upwards to meet Sergius' irritated stare. "We... That is... The elder sisters would not let us disturb you while you received His Eminence. But it's the baby... Babies. They're _twins_!" She flapped her arms in consternation, took a few steps backward to indicate that Sergius should follow, then turned and fled down the hall.

Sergius, following after, his wooden sandals clacking on the floor as he hurried to keep up, felt that surely there was something he was supposed to feel in this situation. Surprise. Shock. But really, his mind had been numbed from his encounter with the Cardinal. It continued numb as he followed the girl down several stone passageways until they reached the novice nuns' communal bath chamber, a room normally off limits to the men, a special exception of course being made in the Abbot's case. Torches lit the interior. A small knot of women were clustered around an unseen something in the center of the room, their faces slack-jawed and mute. One old sister hovered in a corner, back turned from her fellow sisters, crossing herself and kissing her rosary as she mumbled her Hail Marys in whispery, urgent rasps. At the Abbot's arrival, the gathered sisters looked up, then mutely opened a path for him to the center of their throng, the young novice who'd fetched him leading him forward by the wrist. Lying there, wrapped in blankets atop two overturned wooden crates, were the objects of their attention. "Th-they don't cry, or squall, or fuss in any measure," the girl told him as she pulled him forward with such insistence. "Even while their poor mother screamed her life away giving birth to them, the wee ones kept their peace."

On the left lay a small, thin, perfect little infant, hairless and without blemish, making soft baby sounds and muted baby-gurgles; a girl-child, with what looked like a slight smile on her face, waving arms and legs fruitlessly as her eyes darted with insatiable curiosity about the room. On the right, another girl child lay in swaddling clothes, doing much the same, save that it was a bit chubbier, more pale, made soft cooing sounds, and its movements were more robust. Strange, however, was that the girl-child lain to the right had soft, thin, wispy, purple-colored baby-hairs crowning her head; and most terrible yet to Sergius, who at first glance dismissed the sight because he simply could not believe the sight he was cursed to behold: extending from her forehead were small, stumpy, half-formed winglets like the wings of a bat. The horror was not complete, however, until the sisters withdrew the blankets, tilting the babe slightly to the side to show him what lay beneath: black, vestigial wings extending from her shoulder blades, similar to those at her forehead, as dark as night, glistening with the ambient moisture of the room. The joints where her wings met the rest of her body mottled between human flesh and the leathery substance of which these limbs were fashioned. At the very tip of each winglet were tiny yet razor-sharp claws. A collective gasp erupted from the assembled throng, the women all moving backwards, a few making the sign of the cross over themselves, as each miniature bat-wing began jerking from side to side, in time with sudden motions of the baby's arms as it burbled incomprehensible noises to itself. The sister that had held her released her with a start, letting her fall back into a prone position next to her fraternal twin, whom she was utterly unlike in every way. Sergius could only stand there and stare, face bathed in shadow from the sputtering torchlight. Until, in a single motion, he stepped forward, picked up the wingless baby on the left, and handed her in her swaddling blankets to the novice nun who'd led him the way to the bathchamber. "What's your name?" he grunted.

"Sister Alexandra, brother," the girl said, her eyes wide as she accepted the precious cargo, cradling the girl-child in the voluminous sleeves of her white nun's habit. The child didn't cry out at being moved, made no protest at being separted from her sister. She merely made a sound vaguely resembling 'buh-buh-buh' while opening and closing her mouth repeatedly.

"The girl is yours," Sergius barked, his tone curt, imagining his tone sounded a little like Cardinal Simon's. "Your new assignment from this moment onward is her care and protection. Mother Angeline will concur with me on this. No other duties take precedence." The girl said nothing, merely bowed her head and scurried from the room, clutching the complacent, angelic little girl-child to her bosom.

As one, the remaining nuns looked down at her purple-haired, winged twin, then looked up at Sergius, who was rolling up the sleeves of his monk's habit. "The rest of you, out," he barked, not meeting their eyes. There was a moment of hesitation as no one moved, at which point the abbot finally raised his head, strain evident on his face. "You heard me. GET OUT!" Slowly they dropped their gazes, without accusation or recrimination, merely bewilderment and uncertainty, filing out the doorway like mourners in a funeral procession. Sergius shut the door and bolted it behind the last nun to leave, before turning around again, a haunted expression upon his face. "There is nothing else to be done," he murmured to himself, rubbing his hands together, despite the heat of the bath chamber. "The child is unclean. Her unholiness and abomination is writ upon her body for all to see." His breath came in ragged gasps as he did a quick search of his surroundings, finally grabbing onto one of the large heating stones the nuns used to warm their bathwater. "The Cardinal only needs a single princess. Just one. Only one." Hefting it in both hands, testing the weight, his monologue trailing off into half-formed words and muttered phrases, he returned to the stone crates upon which rested the remaining girl-child, now his only companion in the empty room. The baby looked up at him curiously, blinking wide maroon-colored eyes, wriggling her arms and legs, the wings of her back stretching and making little half-hearted flaps against her blanket. Brother Sergius lifted the stone high above his head with both hands, staring down into the girl's wide, luminous eyes.

"_In nomine patri_," he intoned, voice cracking, then brought the stone down with all his strength, the impact making a sound like a crushed melon.

He raised the stone once again above his head - once again, he brought it down with all his might, making another sickening thud as it landed. "_Et filii_..."

The stone rose above his head once more, before making yet another thrust downward. "_Et spiritu sancti_..."

Again and again he raised the stone high, only to bring it down once more each time. He did it over and over, until the stone was slick with dripping green blood, until his hands were coated with it, until blood the color of thistle leaves covered his robes in slowly crusting green stains. His voice was weak from exertion. "I cast thee out in the name of the Lord."

Finally he stood before his handiwork, panting and gasping for breath, letting the stone drop to one side with a loud crunch against the masonry of the bath chamber's floor. His arms fell to his sides listlessly, his muscles like rubber. All of a sudden, his head lifted, jerkily darting from side to side as his ears strained to listen to a sound half-heard amid the blood rushing through his ears.

It is only then, from far off elsewhere in the monastery, that he can hear the ear-splitting cries of a newborn child.

-------  
It was late at night, and Giorgio was sitting behind the front desk of his little inn, watching Hungarian television on his little television set, periodically letting out belly-laughs and pounding the worn wooden counter, when Morrigan plodded in the door. A light rain had washed in from the Adriatic a short while before, and Morrigan's fashionable clothes were damp from the night's wet. "Signora," he called over, leaning out from behind a sketch comedy show in Magyar starring a former porn star and current MP of the National Assembly. "You're in late. Fun evening?"

Morrigan made no reply, and merely stood there in the lobby with her back to him, staring out the door toward the canal.

"But you're soaked," Giorgio exclaimed, moving out from behind the desk. "I shall get you a blanket, and we shall have Giorgio's special coffee in my kitchen, yes?" He put his hands upon her shoulders to guide her inside, and meekly she allowed herself to be led.

Soon she was safely ensconced at a table in Giorgio's cramped but warm and cozy kitchen, blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a mug of hot coffee in her hands, liberally sweetened with some of the hotelier's extensive vodka supply. Giorgio busied himself at the counter, fixing two small plates of cake for them to share. The fluorescent lighting above made a small, quietly insistent humming noise. "Venice is the birthplace of pastry, you know," he said, his back to her. "The first recipes were introduced by Swiss immigrants from Graübunden in the 17th century. They also began the custom of eating pastries with coffee, and opened the first coffee shop in 1680. So it is that this great piece of Venetian culture came from outsiders, who settled here, far from home, seeking shelter." One plate in each hand, he set one next to Morrigan's place at the table, and one for his own as he sat down across from her. "I can relate."

Morrigan woodenly nibbled on her cakes, occasionally sipping from her coffee mug. "I found what I was looking for," she said after a long while, her voice small and frail. "I suppose I shall be leaving tomorrow."

Giorgio nodded, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. "I am sorry to hear this, but of course I knew it would happen eventually." His head turned curiously toward hers, but her expression was blank, eyes content simply to stare at the cupboards beneath the kitchen sink. "Was it expensive?" The tone of his question is offhand, even a little flippant. She takes no notice.

"No," she replies. "I think she felt sorry for me, so she didn't charge me anything." Morrigan's mouth began to open, full of unasked questions, confessions, worries, and terrors. Wondering about the things Giorgio had been made to do to serve his former country, how he had felt about them, how far he had to go. If any of the things he'd done had still haunted him, and how he dealt with them. Even if some of those things weren't even his fault. Even if he felt like a monster simply because he survived while another hadn't, even though he himself was just as much a victim of the same system that had murdered so many others. But in the end, her mouth closed, and none of these words left her lips. Instead, she just had another nibble. "Thanks for the cake. It's delicious."

Giorgio nodded in easy-going silence, simply content with the company.


	3. Chapter 3

Cats, so some have noted, are not quite as smart as some people believe them to be, but then again, they are nowhere near as unintelligent as some others believe them to be. The intelligence level of felines, particularly from their own perspective, is just right. Put another way, a cat is smart enough to possess a sort of raw animal cunning and fuzzy self-absorption, but does not quite possess the necessary level of intelligence to craft a world of comfortable illusions about itself. The world of the cat is raw and unadorned, lacking in such finery as self-delusion, misplaced idealism, or blind faith. Cats, so it is said, see the world around them exactly for what it is.

The one who called herself Morrigan Aensland had been aware of this for some time. The usual deceptions, suggestions and recursive assumptions she crafted from the loose detritus of peoples' minds in order to confuse, distract, or bewitch the occasional individual never worked on cats, who had minds like a smooth, lean coat of fur. This wasn't a particularly anxious concern, however. Cats minded their own business and kept their own counsel, and rarely had any use for the affairs of humans, save for feeding, petting or shelter. She didn't interfere in their business, so they saw no reason to concern themselves with hers. Theirs was a highly convivial arrangement.

Therefore, Morrigan had no objection on a warm night in high summer, deep in the barrio of downtown East Los Angeles where the heat rose in waves off the pavement, when a gangly orange and white tabby casually hopped over the edge of a fire escape to saunter onto her rooftop, seeking nothing more than to find a quiet spot and take a nap after a meal of a particularly filling rat. When he saw Morrigan, he stopped, and stared, entirely immune to the massive screen of mild hypnotic lures and subtle cues that led the attention of humans and even other animals in other directions, though he could see it stretching above her like a series of concentric domes. She lay stretched out upon a long beach towel, lying on her stomach, entirely nude, which he knew vaguely was somewhat rare for humans, even in L.A. Long arms perched on elbows, fingers laced together to support her chin atop the backs of her hands. A bare calf wagged languidly up and down. However the most unusual feature in the tableau set before him was the immense, black, leathery, and vaguely batlike wings attached to her body, just below her shoulderblades. Their movements described a slow, lazy undulation, up from their nadir at the hard concrete of the rooftop to their zenith, barely touching against each other at a perpendicular angle to their owner as they spread to their full span, and then down once again, a warm breeze resulting from their passage. Dangerously sharp claws curled from each wing's apex. At the animal's approach, her head, crowned with a mane of soft, silky-tressed sea-green hair, lazily turned to regard him through half-lidded eyes of piercing cobalt-blue, though their expression communicated nothing but a mild and easy languor; almost, he noted, bordering on catlike. Much smaller black wings curled up from the sides of her head from within the waterfall of green, just above her ears, where they flapped lightly to fan her face, but to his feline sense of priority these were far less unusual than the wings upon her back, due to their clear difference in size.

Morrigan, for her part, relished the occasional opportunity to loll about in this form, pretending to believe that her wing-muscles would otherwise grow stiff and sore from disuse. In fact the ethereal nature of her wings made such a term as 'muscle' entirely irrelevant, but the sensual pleasure of stretching them made such a difference entirely academic. It was an easy form of self-indulgence, and it cost her nothing. "Hello," she purred aloud to her feline visitor, before intimating to him through a series of non-verbal signals and sub-vocal communication, similar to the ones that cats themselves employed, that his company at this time was not unwelcome. But there was no pressure if he was busy The cat agreeably trotted over to the recumbent form before him, pawed against her side for a moment to test the security of his potential perch, before hopping up onto her backside, well out of reach of the slowly flapping wings. Morrigan's eyes closed, letting one arm drop while her cheek leaned against her opposite palm. A small sigh escaped her lips at the feel of his fur against her bare skin, as the cat turned around a few times before curling into a compact furry ball, settling warmly into the cradle formed by the small of her back. Once fully satisfied with his position, he commenced an agreeable purring, the tip of his tail drowsily brushing against the curve of her hip. Quite an equitable arrangement for all concerned.

"Wanna hear a story?" she murmured softly after a long moment of languorous drifting, accompanying the question with its sub-verbal equivalent. The feline modulated the amplitude and pitch of his steady purrs to a short burst of staccato, signaling in the affirmative. "Once upon a time," she began, "I knew someone who loved cats with all her heart..." 

**Edinburgh, Scotland - Spring, 1687**

Inside the somber and forbidding 12th-century architecture of Holyrood Abbey, its conical spires and parapets jabbing the sky with the insistent strength of its history, there lay a small green courtyard consisting of a few stone benches, misshapen by age, ancient ash trees, dandelions, thistles, and overgrown grass, weeds, and shrubs covering all. The grounds were hilly and uneven, covered with loose scree and dead leaves, a testament to generations of lackadaisical groundskeepers preferring to spend their time in the local Edinburgh taverns.

The present Holyrood groundskeeper was a man named Fergus Frasbett, who maintained this legendary tradition of negligence by spending the lion's share of his days and nights firmly ensconced in the welcoming fellowship of the local Edinburgh rowdies down at an alehouse known as 'The Two Maries'. Painted effigies hung by nooses above the tavern's lintel of both Mary of Guise, that dowager Queen of Scotland who ran the kingdom as a satellite of the French, and Mary Stuart, her daughter and that Queen who fled to England from a charge of plotting to kill her husband, Lord Darnley. In a lack of judgment that was regarded by the Edinburgh populace as typically Stuart, she spent most of her time engaging in clumsy attempts to depose Elizabeth, the English Queen, until the wise yet sad Queen Bess finally chopped the fool woman's head off. There had been a lot of sympathy for Elizabeth in Scotland, which had endured centuries of Stuart rule.

"By God, if but Queen Bess were Scottish," Frasbett and his fellows would often say, especially in those days, raising a tankard to that illustrious monarch of what was, much of the time, Scotland's most hated rival. "We'd have married her off to a fine Scottish lad and given her a bundle of bonny Scottish princes and plump Scottish princesses!" The age-old Anglo-Scottish enmity had waned briefly a century before when the same Queen Bess had helped the Scots free themselves from the French, to whom a previous Stuart had foolishly sold virtual control of the kingdom for the hand of the lovely Marie de Guise. Several years after that, the same Faerie Queen would defend the Isles from the hated Spanish, whose dastardly King Philip sought to bring all of Britain under his dainty Habsburg bootheel and return them all to the soul-grubbing arms of the equally-hated Pope Sixtus V. Francis Drake and the Sea-Dogs, as well as a gift from God of foul English weather, had sunk most of the fleet; that which remained had limped north to Scotland and tried to put in at the port of Leith for repairs, only to be met by the port battery guns of the Black Watch and well-nigh a thousand stout and righteous stone-throwing Presbyterians shouting good honest Scottish obscenities most foul at the top of their hardy Scottish lungs. Sadly, poor Elizabeth's own ungrateful subjects would never let the poor girl marry, in a move most regarded as typically and perfidiously English, and when she died, the throne had passed to the son of Mary Stuart, King James VI of Scotland, a dubious prospect for both kingdoms.

Frasbett, who considered himself an upright Presbyterian though seldom attended services (rather like most upright Presbyterians), hated his Catholic employers at Holyrood and took every opportunity to declare his disloyalty. Except of course on the day he was paid, when, hat in hand, he visited the offices of the Abbot, Brother Sergius, to collect his weekly sum of unholy papist gold. Nor did Frasbett distrust the Abbey enough not to leave his only daughter Felicity in their constant care while he spent his time raising mugs of ale and mead with his cohorts.

His choice in babysitter might have been indifference, of course. Felicity's mother Eldspeth Frasbett, whose famous taste for good honest Scotch whiskey was rivaled only by that of her husband, caught a bad case of the flu following her pregnancy and hadn't lived long past the birth, which had been regarded even by the local Edinburgh midwives as extremely difficult. The woman's last thoughts were of her daughter, holding the babe close to her breast and whispering, "my Felicia... my Felicia..." Those would prove to be her last words, as well.

Felicity had been cursed by the further misfortunes of having a cleft lip and palette, clubbed and webbed feet, a hunched back, and a misshapen stump for a left arm. Her head was oddly oversized as well, which the local physicians had attributed to an excess of fluids and bodily humors in her cranium. In the years following her birth, Fergus virtually ignored his daughter, leaving her to be cared for and raised by the sisters of the Holyrood nunnery. It was thus that little Felicity Frasbett met her best friend in all the world, Holyrood Abbey's only resident orphan, who had been baptized on a dark All Hallow's Eve eight and a half years before as Margaret Morgana MacAensland Stuart. Felicity called her 'Morgan', while Margaret dubbed Felicity with the name 'Figgy'. Both girls had no parents to speak of. Felicity's mother was lost to influenza and her father to the bottle, while Morgan had always been told, quite falsely, that she'd been found in a wicker basket on the Abbey doorstep.

The two became inseparable; often, when they were seen playing together, the other inmates at the abbey would shake their heads and make signs of warding. "Aye, that makes sense," they would sneer. "A Covenanter and a child of the Evil One." No other children were resident in the abbey below the age of twelve. None of the Brothers of the monastery or the Sisters of the nunnery would speak to either of them unless they had to, save for Morgan's two guardians, Sister Alexandra and Sister Pauline, and all the young novices were told to keep their distance. Thus all the girls had for the most part was each other. Though little Morgan's time, unfortunately, was forever being filled by endlessly tedious instruction from Abbey tutors, in a variety of subjects ranging from Latin to mathematics to history, and often the only chances the two girls had to play together was when Morgan managed to engineer some devious escape plan from the watchful eyes of Alexandra and Pauline. No one bothered to educate Felicity, who most of the time was left to her own devices. Each girl secretly envied the other.

So it was that when she was off by herself one day, in a quiet corner of the Abbey, young Felicity discovered a small fissure in the wall where the stone had partially given way, exposing a small hole to the outside. It wasn't large enough for a person to fit through, not that Felicity had any wish to venture beyond the walls of the Abbey. She couldn't walk very well, and the few times she'd been to the city, the world had seemed a vast, forbidding and dirty place, where everyone was staring at her and there was always smoke in the air. The hole opened into a small alleyway, situated between the Abbey's wall and a small stand of trees nearby. Beyond that lay a low hill, the spires and towers of grim stone buildings rising from below.

What captured Felicity's attention was the inner edge of the alley, where lay the most amazing thing she'd ever seen in her life. A mother cat giving birth to kittens, the tiny creatures entering the world pink, naked, and utterly defenseless. The mother cat was thin, not quite emaciated, her eyes closed as she lay on a pile of trash and dead scrub-brush swept against the wall, the poor mother-cat's chest heaving tiredly as she gasped for breath. Within moments, Felicity was hobbling toward the abbey kitchens, where she pounded on the rear entrance with her good hand, only to be loudly and roughly informed from behind the locked wooden door that it wasn't lunchtime yet. "Go away, you filthy Covenanter brat!"

Sobbing, gasping for breath, moving faster than she'd ever moved in her life, Felicity was desperately stumbling toward the nunnery, hoping to find anyone who'd listen to her pleas, when God gave her a miracle. Sitting in the courtyard were none other than Sisters Alexandra and Pauline, reading from open books, Morgan sitting between them with a book open in her lap and looking bored. "Mor-GAN!" Felicity screeched, running forward and waving her hand. "Morgan please help theres a mama kitty she looks sick we need milk pleasehelpmehelpmehelpme HELP!"

Morgan, welcoming the interruption, tossed the book off her lap and jumped to her feet to run toward Felicity, only to be caught on the shoulder by the restraining iron grip of Sister Alexandra, her guardian since birth. Morgan's arms waved forward, as her feet tried to carry her free, but Alexandra's grip was viselike and unbreakable. "Your lessons!" Alexandra barked. "You can play with your little godless heretic friend later."

"Let me go!" Morgan wailed. "Figgy's in trouble, can't you see?" Felicity had managed to totter halfway across the courtyard before the uneven ground and rubble resulting from her drunken father's inattention to his duties caused her unsteady stride to falter, the girl pitching forward to fall flat on her face. Alexandra's resolve weakened as Felicity's face lifted from the ground, streaked with tears as she starting bawling in frustration and fear.

It was enough for the nun's grip to loosen, allowing Morgan the chance to lunge forward and escape her grasp, with enough force to stumble a few paces and almost trip over her plain brown dress. Quickly righting herself with preternatural deftness, she broke out into a furious run before finally falling to her knees at her friend's side. The duo exchanged several urgent words that Alexandra couldn't hear. Grunting, the nun lifted herself to her feet, straightening her nun's habit and jerking her head toward the two girls at Pauline, who was sitting there blinking her eyes. "Come on," sighed Alexandra.

"This probably won't be good." Pauline quickly shut her book and carefully placed it to the side, scrambling to her feet. The younger Sister was ten years Alexandra's junior and had been only a young novice, freshly arrived at the abbey from some tiny hamlet deep in the Highlands, when she'd been assigned to assist Alexandra in caring for Morgan once the girl had proven to be the devil's own handful.

As Alexandra and Pauline approached the two girls, Morgan helped Felicity regain her footing; and when Alexandra finally reached her, putting her hands on her hips and trying to tower over the young orphan, Morgan was standing with her arms crossed, her feet planted, and what she hoped was a sternly commanding expression on her face. "Figgy needs milk and some meat," she declared. Felicity stood behind her shyly, her eyes downcast, intimidated by the Sisters' presence.

"Young Felicity can wait until lunchtime with the rest of us," Alexandra replied flatly, not deigning to spare a glance at Felicity herself. "Though perhaps girls who ignore their schooling don't deserve a good meal, eh?"

Morgan was unmoved by the threat, her gaze never wavering. "Figgy needs MILK," she repeated, stamping her foot.

Pauline, dropping to her knees, fell into her usual role of peacemaker between the two. "Morgana, please," she said, reaching a hand for the girl's shoulder. The sisters tended to call her 'Morgan' or 'Morgana' as well, for their own reasons. "Once we finish your Latin we can all go to lunch and have plenty. What do you say?"

Morgan only batted Pauline's hand away as her gaze remained fixed on Alexandra. "Figgy needs milk NOW," she stated, putting her own hands on her hips to echo Alexandra's stance. There was a drawn-out pause as the will of the girl clashed with that of the older woman, until Morgan leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. "If Figgy does not get her milk NOW, then I will not learn any more Latin! And I'll forget all the Latin I've learned already. It will all be gone! Bye-bye Latin!" Alexandra's eyes remained cold and unmoving, as did her face. For a moment, Morgan wondered if she'd taken a step too far - Sister Alexandra wasn't above an old-fashioned boxing of the ears. "But if Figgy gets her milk and some meat," Morgan continued, smiling hopefully and leaning back, her hands moving behind her waist, eyes casting downward, "then for the rest of the day, I will be the best Latin student ever. No talking back, no rolling my eyes, no daydreaming, woolgathering, or lollygagging. Just 'yes Sister' and 'no Sister', ad nauseum. Won't that be mirabile visu?" Morgan lifted her eyes again, putting on her widest, charmingest, most dazzling smile for the Sister's benefit.

Alexandra remained motionless, her gaze inscrutable. The tension stretched onward for a moment, before her head leaned to the side toward Pauline, eyes never leaving Morgan's. "Turn her around."

Pauline did as she was bid, gently but quickly grabbing Morgan by the shoulders and spinning her around, the girl letting out a yelp. Behind her back the eight-year-old's hand was grasping the wrist of the other, the opposite hand clenched in a fist. Pauline turned her head to report. "Fingers uncrossed, Sister Alex."

Alexandra allowed for a moment the idea of an entire day with an attentive, perfect little angel taking Morgana's place to infiltrate her resolve. Such temptation, she decided, even God must surely forgive. She made a spinning gesture to Pauline, who turned Morgan around once again, smiling weakly in apology to the girl. Pauline had far too much sympathy for the little she-beast than Alexandra was comfortable with. Morgan giggled as she spun, then quickly lifted her face to Alexandra once more with a hopeful expression. Alexandra knelt down, bringing her face level with the girl's, who leaned back just a little, blinking her eyes. "You have a deal, child," Alexandra told her. "I'll forgive your earlier lack of respect as well if you manage to keep your word. For nothing is more dear in the sight of God than an oath given in good faith. Do we understand each other?"

Morgan nodded earnestly. "Yes, Sister Alexandra."

The little party, Alexandra in front, Pauline in her train, Morgan and Felicity following behind hand-in-hand, thereafter descended upon the abbey kitchens. When told that lunch wasn't for another hour, Alexandra, with all the wrath of the Almighty that she normally employed with Morgan - but to gratifyingly better effect with the cooks and kitchen drudges - informed the staff that God's mercy was spontaneous and forgiving, while the fires of Hell kept to a rigid schedule and their rules were never broken for anyone. It wasn't so much the content of her speech, but its delivery, that inspired the kitchen staff to present to the little party two bowls of milk, a bowl of water for good measure, and a plate of finely chopped beef within mere moments. All the while Morgan had to struggle not to giggle her head off, as Pauline and the normally shy and diffident Felicity covered their mouths from apparent fits of choking. As they exited the kitchens, even Alexandra allowed herself a small smile, feeling somewhat vindicated in her technique for sternness, since obviously it wasn't a lack of authoritativeness on Alexandra's part that made Morgan so willful. She was just a devil-child, purely and simply. As such thoughts veered in that direction, however, she quickly banished them, willing herself to forget the circumstances of the girl's birth. Her reverie was interrupted by Morgan turning to face her and affecting a small, grateful curtsy. "I shall return in ten minutes to honor our agreement," she earnestly informed the two nuns. Then in one impulsive moment she carefully put down the plate of beef she carried, lunged forward to hug Alexandra around the legs, then turned around again, picked up the plate once more and scurried off with Felicity to deeper within the Abbey, laden with their precious cargo. Felicity stumbled and hobbled a little as she led the way, but managed to keep the two to a rapid pace without dropping the bowls she carried so carefully.

Sister Pauline allowed herself a smile of her own. "Perhaps they've found a poor, lonely soul without sustenance," she said, clasping her hands together. "Such small hearts are always bursting with goodness." When Alexandra didn't make her usual cynical reply, Pauline turned toward her, blinking her eyes in curiosity. "Alex," she says after a moment, lifting a finger. "Are you blushing?"

Alexandra quickly turned away, raspily clearing her throat. "Absolutely not. Quickly, we must prepare the most intense lesson plan ever devised," she grunted, stalking forward. "We have only ten minutes. We cannot waste such a God-sent opportunity!"

Pauline followed behind her, smiling. "Yes, Sister Alexandra."

With the help of Felicity and Morgan, the kittens and their mother managed to survive, and grow strong. It became Felicity's obsession to return to that little hole in the wall, leaving whatever food she could spare from her own meals for the little feline family. As the kittens became cats, they still visited, anxiously mewling for Felicity's attention, which she gave happily. Soon other cats in the neighborhood, perhaps venturing thither to see what the fuss was about, would visit as well. Over time, Felicity began to volunteer to assist in the kitchens or the scullery, and though in the beginning she was either ignored or even kicked aside by irritated kitchen staff, they eventually grew to appreciate her willingness to engage in tasks the rest of them found either too distasteful or tedious. Her reward was some of the extra food they would otherwise either burn or bury, or toss over the wall. Each morsel she would slip through her little hole in the wall to her friends, who were always waiting for her. Occasionally some of them began to slip through that hole, and let her pet them, or hold them in her lap. It wasn't long before all the cats of Edinburgh knew the scent of Felicity Frasbett, and knew she was a friend to their kind.

Morgan occasionally helped out as well, but despite her laziness the girl ate like a starving war-horse and for the most part could not herself be troubled to spare any food. 

**Epilogue**

Many of the concepts integral to the story were lost upon Morrigan's audience. For one thing, the idea of the 'past' was so remote and alien to feline sensibilities that the idea that there were cats who somehow existed before his own lifetime struck Morrigan's visitor as somehow ludicrous. They may have looked like cats, acted like cats, and felt themselves to be cats, but they did not qualify as cats in the same sense that he was a cat. Humans, or even dogs for that matter, had more in common with cats as he understood them than some almost-cats who did not, strictly speaking, have a concrete existence save in Morrigan's memories. These and other mild criticisms he attempted to communicate to his gracious and satin-skinned hostess, while at the same time granting that, all-in-all, it was certainly a tale worthy of his attention. He went on to inform her that he would pay her little narrative quite the compliment in the near future by borrowing bits and pieces of it for himself, molding them more to feline tastes, and then regaling his friends and potential mates with the story of a human so enlightened as to her proper place in the world that nothing was more important to her than a cat's appetite. A story that would also include her selfish friend, who despite occasional flashes of compassion for others cared only to stuff her own face.

"Thank you," said Morrigan, with barely a trace of archness in her tone. She made a mental note to evict her guest as soon as possible. Not right now, of course. Perhaps later, when they weren't quite so comfortable. In fact, there was really no hurry. What was she thinking about? Oh yes, she thought to herself, the moonlight. Diffusing through the skin of her wings like light through the facets of a jewel, the warm air gently rolling in currents and eddies beneath them as they stretch up, and down. Up, and down.

The bristling, burgeoning nightlife of East L.A. raced intensely past them below, brightly illuminated by headlights and orange street-lamps, yet entirely oblivious to her presence.


End file.
